Chapter 6
My driver dropped me off at my house and I walked up to my door still thinking about Kyla…
the roses I had bought for her, and my chef that I had booked.
She was probably pulling up to her door right about now.
I didn’t wait for a response or to see how Kyla would feel about the roses or the Chef coming.
I knew that she would eventually call and say something.
I hated rejection and if she wasn’t feeling the shit that I had done for her, then I didn’t want to be around to see her reaction.
Even though I didn’t see her face when she saw the roses, I did hope that they made her day.
She had been so sweet to a nigga last night, I just wanted to do some shit to make her smile today.
I unlocked my front door and pushed it open, only to find Gutta was in my living room pacing the floor.
I stopped in the doorway. Walked out, and walked right back in to make sure that I wasn’t trippin.
“Gutta, How did you even get in here and what you doing?”
“What you mean? I used my key you gave me.” his response was as if he was the muthafucka that was annoyed.
“For emergencies. Not to pace around my living room at—” I looked at my phone.
“Nine in the morning.” I told his ass, knowing that all he wanted was to talk shit about Simone’s spoiled ass. She’s been on his ass about this house buying process and she had my boy stressed the hell out on most days.
“This is an emergency.”
I looked at him closer. He had that look on his face that he only got when something was genuinely wrong. Not like street life wrong. Personal wrong. Now, I was feeling fucked up for grilling him like that.
I closed the door and dropped my keys on the counter.
“Talk to me. You know I was just fuckin’ with you. Whenever you need to be here, come on. Regardless.”
He stopped pacing and looked at me and then looked at the floor and then looked back at me.
“I saw a baby the other day,” he said. This shit was throwing me off. But I was gonna let him finish. Did he want a baby now or something?
I waited, while giving him a look that said to spit it out.
“At the grocery store, while I was with Simone.” He ran his hand over his face.
“Little girl gotta be around three years old. She bumped into me in the aisle and I looked down at her and—” He stopped.
He kept pacing and rubbing his hands over his head.
Now, he was worrying me. The nigga needed to spit the shit out.
“And what?” I asked, now I was tired of waiting on him to spit it out.
“She looked just like me, Street.”
I stared at him. “What you mean she looked just like you.”
“I mean she had my face. My exact face on a three year old little girl.” He sat down on my couch and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “And then her mama walked up.”
“Who was her mama?” my nosey ass was trying to rush the process and get to the bottom of this shit now. It clearly had my boy shaken up. I don’t remember him having a relationship three or four years ago, cause he was chasing Simone then.
He was quiet for a second too long.
“Gutta.”
“It’s somebody I messed around with about four years ago, the shit wasn’t nothing to mention at that time.
“Okay and?”
He looked up at me. “She was married.”
I put my hand on top of my head and just stood there for a second.
“She was married?” I repeated. I knew damn well my nigga wasn’t getting down like that. I’ve done some shit in my days, but it was some lines that we knew not to cross. This nigga knew first hand that Karma didn’t miss niggas that moved like that.
“Yeah.”
“And now she has a baby that might be yours and not her husband?”
“Yeah.”
I sat down in the chair across from him because standing was starting to feel like too much for this conversation. I leaned back and looked at the ceiling for a second and then looked back at him.
“Does she know for sure it’s yours.”
“She won’t give me a straight answer. She shut me down hard when I reached out.
She’s got a husband, a whole life and she don’t want me anywhere near it.
I know that if he thinks that baby is his and it turns out to be mine, this can blow up her whole life.
” He shook his head. “But I forced her to agree to meet me today. I told her if she didn’t I was pulling up to her crib. ”
“Today?” I asked, because I was trying to figure some shit out for him.
“Today. So I need you to think with me because I don’t know how to handle this. That’s why I’m here. Yo ass always know what to do.”
I looked at him for a while. Gutta was the most unshakeable person I had ever known in my life.
I had seen this man in situations that would have broken most people and he would never even flinch.
And right now he was sitting on my couch looking like he hadn’t slept and his whole world was tilting sideways.
“Does Simone know?”
He closed his eyes for a second. “No. And I don’t know if she ever will.”
“Damn nigga.”
“I know. I know what you about to say, and I’m fucked up right now. That’s not even all that I got on my plate, but I know this is what I need to handle and address first. Mannn, I might have a seed out here.”
“You might have a seed and lose yo damn woman. This shit is crazy man,”
“I said I know.” He stood back up and started moving again because Gutta couldn’t sit still when something was eating him.
“Simone noticed the resemblance and made a joke about it and I laughed it off. She don’t know the full picture yet.
” He looked at me. “And I need to figure out if there’s even a full picture to tell before I blow my whole relationship up over something I can’t prove. ”
That was the smartest thing he had said since I walked in.
“Walgreens,” I said. Thinking out loud, more than anything.
He looked at me. “What.”
“We need to go to Walgreens right now and get a DNA test. You take it with you to this meeting today and you don’t leave without getting a sample from that baby.
I don’t care what the mama says or how uncomfortable it gets.
If that little girl is yours you have a right to know and she has a right to know who her father really is.
Nobody gets to take that from you because it’s inconvenient for their marriage.
Her ass knew she was married when she gave that ass up. Who the fuck is this girl, man?”
He stood there and I could see something move through him. Like he had been carrying the weight of not knowing what to do and somebody had just handed him the first real step forward. His eyes said that he wasn’t going to tell me who this person was. Now, I wondered if I knew her.
“What if she won’t let me test her? I mean what if she really gets to tripping? And if it’s not my child, then I have no right to just swab the baby on some creep shit. The last thing I need is a charge,”
“Then you tell her you’ll get a court order. Because you will. And she knows that will make shit worse. Louder and messier. She won’t be able to hide shit from her husband then. We will have her served at her front door.”
He nodded slow.
“And Gutta.” I looked at him straight. “Whatever the result is we gone handle it. You hear me? You’re not going through this by yourself. As hard as it is, try not to stress it because we gone figure all this shit out together. “
He looked at me and I could see him being appreciative of me being here and riding with him.
“You think she’s mine.” It came out quieter than everything else he had said.
Although I had no clue who this girl was that he’d been secretly creeping with back then. I thought about what he had described. That face. The way he said that baby looked exactly like him before he even knew who the mother was.
“It’s possible if you was fuckin raw. I think she could yours. Especially if you know for a fact that you’ve messed around with her at that time. I also know that looks don’t mean nothing either. This shit can go either way.”
He sat back down and put his face in his hands and stayed there for a minute. When he looked up something had changed in his expression. Still stressed. But underneath the stress something else was there that I hadn’t seen on him before.
“When I saw her,” he said. “Before I even knew who she belonged to. Before Sandra walked up. I was just crouched down looking at this little girl and my chest got warm in a way I ain’t never felt before in my life.
” He shook his head like he was embarrassed to be saying it.
“Like some fuzzy warm shit that I don’t even have words for.
I just knew she meant something. I didn’t even know why yet but I knew. ”
I looked at my cousin and almost smiled. This wasn’t at all like Gutta. Although I never asked, cause I never wanted to actually know. I knew he had a few bodies under his belt, so I never seen his ass like this.
“That’s what it feels like,” I said.
“What.”
“Being somebody’s parent. That’s what that feeling is. To have love for someone you don’t even know. That shit is deep. You gotta know the truth.”
He looked at me and I could see him sitting with that.
Really sitting with it. Gutta who had never wanted children, who had spent his whole life moving fast and light with no attachments he couldn’t walk away from, was sitting in my living room with warm fuzzy shit in his chest over a three year old little girl he had seen for thirty seconds at a grocery store.
“I can’t neglect my own blood,” he said.
“Even if this blows everything up. Even if Simone—” He stopped. “I can’t just walk away from her if she’s mine.”
“You won’t,” I said. “That’s not who you are. Anything that’s meant for you can’t be easily lost.” I told him, meaning his relationship with his girl.
He nodded and we sat with that for a minute.
Then he looked at me like he was just realizing some shit.
“Why are you just getting home at this time in the morning? Where you been all night?”
I leaned back in my chair and thought of Kyla.